


Talk Of An End

by JDylah_da_Kylah



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Feels, Catharsis, Depends on how you look at it, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, Existential Angst, Forbidden Love, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghost Qui-Gon Jinn, Free Will, Heavy Angst, Hope vs. Despair, Jedi Code (Star Wars), M/M, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Nightmares, Philosophy, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-07 13:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19086007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JDylah_da_Kylah/pseuds/JDylah_da_Kylah
Summary: Qui-Gon left a holorecorded message for his Padawan just before his death--a recording that Obi-Wan had found but couldn't bring himself to play. Twenty years later, in exile, the spectral Master draws attention to this one piece of the past that shouldn't have been buried--but perhaps it's not his Padawan who needs to hear it now.Or: "What makes one heroic?—Going out to meet at the same time one’s highest suffering and one’s highest hope.”





	Talk Of An End

**Author's Note:**

> Strongly-suggested soundtrack: Helen Jane Long's ["Talk Of An End"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSwAr8pxn_g).
> 
> This ended up going weirdly. I don't know. I've always wondered why Qui-Gon doesn't retreat back through the forcefields rather than try to take on Maul alone. And then there's this line from the _Revenge of the Sith_ novelization where the duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin is, at least in part, about "all the ways they've hurt each other"--and those two thoughts collided. 
> 
> And I wanted to turn the tables, just a bit.
> 
> The "Or" comes from Friedrich Nietzsche's _The Gay Science_ , aphorism 268, translated by Walter Kaufmann.
> 
> Thoughts and comments are ever and always welcome. I do hope you enjoy. <3

_< Did you ever find the holorecording I left for you?>_

The question fills the silence cast by the shadows of a hard day, promising that the night ahead will be welcome distraction. Obi-Wan has shaken himself from agonized sleep, seeking solace in meditation, trusting in the Force to whisper to his body that such a trance is as good as sleep—if not better—for at least then he can control his mind . . .

And so the night began, really, in the afternoon, while the suns had burned away in rage and the heat fought to swallow everything. Now it’s near dusk, and the suns’ battle ends in a bloodshot sky, and Obi-Wan finds that still he cannot speak, so thoroughly have the nightmares snared his tongue. Qui-Gon, Force-clad form of the man that once he was, has dropped the question into the current between them—but formulating such an answer is no easier.

_Mustafar. He’d dreamed of Mustafar. Padme had not come. Vader lay burning on the shoreline of the hellish river, and Obi-Wan had cradled him, gently as a child, reaching out through the Force, through the bond that in this nightmare wasn’t broken, wasn’t sullied, severed—whispering words of love and sorrow to that tortured mind—taking away the pain—_

_And had stepped into the lava._

_Yes. The end. Together._

_He should have fallen with Qui-Gon, but failing that—failing his own Padawan in turn—failing in his promise—_

_Together._

Wearily Obi-Wan rubs at his eyes, sweat-sticky, encrusted still with sleep. There’s a headache gathering at his temples, and he lets himself feel the pounding waves of pain, the pressure, the beginnings of nausea, rather than entrusting his healing to the Force. He wishes, not for the first time, that Mos Eisley was closer—what he wouldn’t give to be able to lose himself in the shadows of the cantina. Or, far better yet, to sit at Dex’s diner, with glass after glass of _ardees_ refilled cheerfully by FLO—

A ripple, a frown, from his Master snaps into his melancholic reverie; no longer is his voice borne through his mind, as sure as his own thoughts, but given edge and steel by sound and strung decibels.

“It’s not that you couldn’t purge the alcohol from your system, Obi-Wan; I have no fear of you winding up a drunk—but a drink won’t end your nightmares. You won't really forget.”

It’s not _just_ that, he wants to say—it’s . . . something, anything, to draw his mind away from itself, to slip into the latticework of the living Force. Far better to lose himself that way than to dwell on dreams wherein his fate was fire and agony, shared by the Padawan he’d failed—a fate, true enough, where he would be transformed into the Force, but a fate also where Luke would have no protector—where he might not even live—

A Jedi does not wish for death. Not that he gives his own demise serious consideration—but there was a savage simplicity to the hellish thought—

“Obi-Wan.”

Qui-Gon’s visage swims into focus, pale in the light of Tatooine’s daily-dying suns, dazzling behind his eyes.

“Master.”

His tongue is thick, his mouth dry; slowly he rises to his feet, finds the canteen with the water he’s managed to coax from the desert. It’s warm, but it loosens the vice cast round him—by dehydration or the dream, he neither knows nor cares.

“I would not lose myself, Master. It was just a nightmare.” A pause, a shuddered breath, and words are not enough. _< Please, if you are worried, I . . . it was just a nightmare. My thoughts do not carry me to such a place; it is no wish of mine, nor to dwell on . . . ah . . . what might have been.>_

A heavy furrow burrows creases at his Master’s brow, those deep blue eyes shadowed and unreadable; Qui-Gon’s lips are pulled into a frown. “You have not answered my question, Padawan.” The admonition is gently-laid. He is no youngling in need of correction, although at times he still seems so—

A hand at the younger man’s shoulder, unfelt but for energy and memory and light . . .

_< And of course I am worried for you. As I always have been.>_

The question, reiterated, unspoken: Obi-Wan follows a trail of ruddy light towards a window; half-hidden from sight at a ledge carved into the wall is a chest . . . his lightsaber . . . and Luke’s (for Luke’s it will be, someday—it ceased being his father’s long ago) . . . He fingers find, first, the handheld holoprojector, one of the few pieces of technology he’s carried with him, lest Yoda or Bail Organa have need to contact him . . . and then, buried deep, the disc. Two decades earlier, he’d found it resting on his sleep-couch at the Temple, following Naboo . . .

Obi-Wan sits back on his heels, breathing deeply, settling against the wall among shadows. The hovel will have to do—the shade—the way the wind makes the dunes hiss as if in pain but fairly makes the canyons sing. The Force is everywhere, and if he can’t sit at the diner’s counter and trade tall tales with Dex—well—

The disc is tilted in his hands, gleaming, a metallic crimson flare, before it’s slipped into the projector, cradled in his shaking hands as if it’s something intangibly, unutterably fragile. The nuances of Qui-Gon’s question have finally struck home; at his side sits his spectral Master, head bowed, tresses of hair half-obscuring his aquiline face. But here—here is the imprint of an action that he took in life. Perhaps the only one, and all the rest are but memories in the minds of those who knew him . . .

“I meant for you to see this so long ago . . .” Qui-Gon watches closely as Obi-Wan’s fingers restlessly toy with the projector, dancing around the activation switch.

“I could not bear it,” comes the answer—hollow, almost, diffident, as if there is more behind those words and two decades’ worth of repressed sorrow that he could never fully allow himself to feel.

* * *

In a spray of static, the image of Qui-Gon Jinn appears: flitting in and out of existence for a moment, less tangible even than the spirit at Obi-Wan’s side. The sight of him brings a sudden biting blade of pain at his throat, a difficulty in drawing breath: the living image of his Master—the intent behind it—for him— _for him_ —

The hologram stares up into his face a moment, the visage somber, the eyes shadowed; there is an almost weary hunch to those powerful shoulders that Obi-Wan had so rarely seen in life. And then, slowly, in a voice not quite his own, the image of Qui-Gon begins to speak:

 _“If you are seeing this . . .”_ A pause, the figure frozen for just long enough that Obi-Wan begins to wonder if the hologram’s corrupted. And then a hand is rubbed across those sleep-deprived and sunken eyes, and Qui-Gon seems much older a man than he was—or, perhaps, he _was_ , and it takes the static-spray of a hologram, a message from a dead man whose spirit sits at his side, the twenty years between, to realize it . . .

_“I’m recording this before we return to Naboo. And if you are seeing this . . . you must understand the reasons why._

_“Even though you’ve rarely spoken of it, I know that the Force grants you precognition; it is a blessing, Obi-Wan—but it can also be a curse. Be mindful of it, always. This ability is granted to me also, although I suspect both of us understand that we have no control over what is shown to us. Or when. The future is always in motion . . ._

_“But ever since finding Anakin, I have seen . . . certain events . . . in meditation. I have seen what must be . . . I have seen the latticework of the prophecy, and how ensnared in it is Anakin. Is his destiny his choosing? I can’t say I know. Or how he will get there in the end.”_

The figure straightens, as if an invisible burden is taken from its shoulders. There is a faint, sorrowful smile half-formed at Qui-Gon’s lips, and Obi-Wan knows that if he could tear his eyes away from the hologram, he would see the same expression on his Master’s Force-cast face.

 _“I do not expect you, in your grief, to take comfort in this . . . but what has happened is my destiny, just as yours awaits you—at_ your _choosing.”_

Another pause; the holographic figure bows its head a moment.

_“For what I said in the Council chambers . . . I am sorry. You are strong and wise, Obi-Wan, and I am very proud of you. I can think of no better a Master for Anakin than you. You have made peace with your anger, you have found peace with the Code, you have stared into the eyes of the Sith . . . and if you are seeing this . . . then you have done what no Jedi has in one thousand years._

_“It must be you.”_

But mingled with the pride, the love, that only now Obi-Wan can recognize for what it is, there’s something else—and in it he hears echoes of his own worries for Luke: such an impossible thing to put on another being’s shoulders—destiny and the will of the Force—

What of choice?

 _“Obi-Wan.”_ The figure reaches out a hand, and with a jolt the former realizes that if he were watching this on a full-sized holoprojector, the gesture would nearly bring those fingers to his cheek. _“I’m asking too much of you. I don’t know what the future brings—your future. Anakin’s. The Order’s . . . What I have gotten are only shifting pieces of scattered glass, reflecting light . . . of some pieces I am certain . . . the actions I will take—have taken—but what the mosaic will become? . . . Obi-Wan, if I . . . Signs can be snares and if I have somehow . . . misunderstood . . ._

 _“I know . . . we do not always agree on how to interpret the Code. I know you often think I do not follow it; I know, too, that it is your_ foundation _—a foundation laid in blood and sorrow as much as hope and faith. So it is, I think, for most Jedi, at some point in their lives . . . But I must say this to you, at the last, and for all the times I could not speak.”_

The audio cuts out, the image wavering. The hologram’s lips form words, no more than a whisper, slight, but the gaze, the expression—even in so small a projection—is enough to tear at Obi-Wan’s heart. And then the audio returns with a crackle that startles the welled tears from his eyes.

_“Trust in your training. Let the Force guide you. Remember, always, that I am with you. And some day . . . when you . . ._

_“My Padawan.”_ Even through the static of the hologram, the shadow of his Master’s voice is emotionally taut to the point of cracking. _“We_ will _see each other again. I promise.”_

* * *

The holoprojector drops from his hands, falls as a weighted metallic bell against the stone. Obi-Wan glances at Qui-Gon, finding in his gaze more sorrow than the hologram could ever convey, more regret—and more love.

 _< There was so much more I wanted to say to you then.> _Gone, the tangibles, the syllables of sound threaded through the air. Instead they flood through Obi-Wan—emotions, images, sensations—words—poured into him through the Force, surrounding him as only his Master could in the starkest moments of anguish or joy. Their bond had never been as such in life; Qui-Gon was not aloof but neither was he forthcoming, often, with his own emotions; he was a wellspring unto Obi-Wan but there were always currents that the Padawan could never know. But now—unfettered—

 “Master.”

The word is raw and rough; it tastes like blood—like the pain of a hard lesson learned during training, perhaps; certainly not like the wound from an opponent. Obi-Wan draws a breath, shifts on his haunches, crosses his legs and holds out his hands, palms down, forearms balanced on his knees. The spirit of his Master shimmers, the form echoing his own—but now it’s _his_ fingertips which press into upturned, proffered palms, pooling there in the heatless warmth and light. The energy travels through him, as if the blood in his veins, and he bows his head. “There is no emotion; there is peace,” he whispers finally, the words half a hymn at his lips. “There is no ignorance; there is knowledge . . .”

The recitation of the Code draws them at last into the familiar—and whatever theological differences as had caused tension between them now seem so scant as to hardly matter—

It is Qui-Gon who speaks the last tenet—a salve to their minds—a ripple: the final drop of water following torrential rain:

_< There is no death; there is the Force.>_

* * *

The sparks of the suns are snuffed and darkness crawls across the sky. The storm still rages, howling not unlike a beast; Obi-Wan stares from the shadows of his ill-lit hovel into the night, knowing that even the Sand People won’t venture into such a squall.

He turns, picks up the holoprojector, letting it rest in his hand for a long time. He feels Qui-Gon watching him, shifting into being just behind his eyes, or at the edges of his gaze as it slips around the room. Again he reaches for his Master through the Force, as one might hold out their arms. There are no words—never for moments such as this.

Qui-Gon’s presence washes over him—and more—the tangled realities of living a life of sacrifice, of being flawed, of loving deeply. Where visions lead men to their deaths but for a shadowed destiny that not a one of them could have foreseen. Where darkness seeks, always, to erode the light, and what-might-have-beens are legion.

And for the first time, enshrouded by the Light, embraced by Love, Qui-Gon simply lets himself be held.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies if I've cross-pollinated terminology between _Star Trek_ and _Star Wars_ , re: holo-everything. It all tends to blur together after a while . . .
> 
> And another buried partial KOTOR 2 quote because that scene and that line from Kreia always give me shivers.


End file.
